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Joshua Bodwell, 36Executive Director
Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance
Joshua Bodwell became executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA) in August 2010, since which time the 37-year-old organization has nearly doubled in paying membership, to more than 1,200 people. He has revitalized the MWPA in many ways, as his Forty Under 40 award nominator, board president Sibyl Masquelier, notes:
“Aligning the (state) poet laureate’s office with the MWPA; planning and staging at least one writing event a month in various parts of the state; successfully writing grant proposals which have put and kept MWPA in the black; greatly expanding the MWPA literary awards, categories, and prizes; creating an active Facebook page with 1,000 members, re-designing MWPA’s quarterly publication “Maine in Print,†and now re-launching it as a glossy cover magazine; and what I consider the biggest coup: partnering MWPA with many great organizations and institutions, such as the Portland Public Library, Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, Maine Festival of the Book, Bangor Book Festival, May Sarton Centennial, Belfast Poetry Festival, and the list goes on and on.â€Â
Before joining the MWPA, Bodwell was an award-winning journalist with the “York County Coast Star,†then associate editor of “Maine Home + Design†magazine, and principal and creative director of North40Creative, a communications design studio in Biddeford.
Throughout this period, he was board president of Kennebunk’s Graves Library. He serves on the board at Engine, a Biddeford-based arts organization he co-cofounded. Bodwell continues to produce journalism, contributing regularly to magazines such as “Poets & Writers.†He is a contributing editor at the online journal Fiction Writers Review. His fiction and poetry have been published in magazines and quarterlies across the United States and in Europe.
A Maine native, Bodwell has completed three teaching residences at Dulwich College in London. Most recently, he was appointed to the Maine Arts Commission.
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